I am working on updating all my open sourced libraries to 1.3, adding them to github and submitting them to the forge. Yes, a long list, but bare with me … it happens step by step and even faster with the help of contributors. Kudos to everybody that forked the code and posted back their fixes and enhancements!

After a lot of feedback from the community and testing in the wild, the stable 3.0 release got tagged on github. The latest commits contain several bugfixes and new options: timeLimit prevents Flash timeouts from the server response and policyFile allows you to select your own policy file location. The changelog provides more details.

Get the up-to-date download packages. If you did not yet update your old FancyUpload 2, now is definitely the time! If you run into problems or want to share your experiences, join the support forum. Needless to say, this latest 3.0 version can be copied over the previous release candidates straightforward.

A short update with less words but a link to a the new showcase: "Attach a file".

I promised regular showcase releases in the FancyUpload 3.0 announcement, this is the first one in the row and only the tip of the iceberg. The new showcase is a copy of a real-world example (most web developers will recognize the original) implemented as a reusable class that will be released later. The final class will also include a graceful fallback to an iframe-based uploader with nearly the same functionality.

Despite the delay, the completely rewritten version of FancyUpload, version 3.0, got pushed to github today. This new version is more stable, has better documentation and more showcases than ever. I even added two download packages with runnable installations, like many developers requested. This article introduces the new features and showcases, impatient readers can jump directly to the comprehensive project page or fork on github.

The new MooTools Core 1.2.2 was announced today. It contains several important bug fixes, especially class support for Safari 4 and position calculation.

The new MooTools More 1.2.2.1 is the initial full release, updates will now come more frequently. Thanks to the developers and the community who helped a lot with feedback and contributions. Grab your own copy of MooTools Core and More and check out the new awesomeness.

I beg your pardon if my comment system failed you in the past. From today, this problem is solved!

To provide a proper support platform for my steadily growing and gorgeous community, I hereby introduce the official support forums. With your help it will be a vivid place to post and discuss questions, answers, bugs, fixes, ideas and the latest web craftsman gossip.

I hope you enjoy the forums, new project releases will be published next week (only because end of the week is a bad time to release awesomeness).

Update: Oops, the release will be next week. An April Fool so close before the real release, very cruel, I know!

Finally, I can start the public beta for the upcoming FancyUpload 3.0. Enjoy the sneak preview showcase, it is kept very simple, providing the basic feature set. The process indicator is provided directly in the browser window. The new control is even more cross-browser, a lot of tests on different platforms ensure that!

If people like what they see, I’ll release it officially (and documented) this week! Now go and check out the preview!

// Finds all odd rows in all tables
var rows = Sly.search('table td:odd');
// Finds all links with class "internal" and an attribute "href" starting with "#".
var links = Sly.search('a.internal[href^="#"]');
// Another notation is also possible, since Sly acts as a constructor
var snippets = Sly('pre.highlight.javascript > code').search();
// features is just one element, lists has all list items are siblings of features
var features = Sly.find('#features');
var lists = Sly.search('~ ul', body);

I always tell people that there are many hidden gems on my playground. In the upcoming weeks, I will start to release some of those secrets to the public. You can peek at the snippets and perhaps put them to some good use.

It is Friday, so we start with some playtime: Blue Chess is a pretty old class which I wrote a year ago as proof of concept. It allows you to play a round of chess with 10kb elegant JavaScript. That is, if you find an opponent in real life, since it has no AI opponent.
My favourite features are the animated dragging and interactive preview of possible moves.
You can also pick up pieces and undo moves, but the implemented rules for “check-mate” are not yet complete.

Enjoy!

p.s. I fixed the SqueezeBox.css which was released yesterday. I forgot to update some lines. If any problems occurred on your site using it, try downloading it again.

I found some time to give SqueezeBox some love. The new version was ready for some time, only needing some testing and a little fine tuning.

The functionality is still the same, but there are a lot of nifty things in this new release. Like a new look—with smooth shadows! And by hiding the browser scrollbars, it now prevents jumping pages and provides a better modal user experience. Images load fine now, so no more Endless-Spinner-of-Death™. Iframes are now also pre-loadable and are shown when the page loads completely.

The next iteration will feature an awesome caption bar and series navigation. The current API already supports them, so I just need to create elegant and usable interface for those.

I hope that everything works fine for you all and any feedback is appreciated. And please, do send me your sites that use SqueezeBox.

I just returned from my 4 weeks honeymoon trip through Chile, where we travelled from Santiago to Tierra del Fuego and enjoyed the nature and very friendly and open-hearted people. I will visit it again someday but for now I do admit that “there is no place like home”.

With plenty of availability, fresh energy and full of ideas, I would love to take new challenges, now as part of your projects. There were many contracting and consulting requests; therefore I decided to freelance from now on “more officially”. If you merely need an adapted version of my open source projects, a full-blown user interface design or any other consulting (MooTools, plain JavaScript, XHTML/CSS, whatsoever), give me a call to get a quote.

This is one of the new objectives of MooTools, and the developers, co-developers and beta-testers work hard and (and perfectionistic) on creating, discussing and fixing tickets. Yesterdays 1.2.1 release is a drop-in replacement (no breaking changes) with:

Proceed as normal, get the complete release on the download page or customize your download. The upcoming milestone 1.2.2 is already geared with exciting new features and improvements. If you work with 1.2, updating is simple and highly recommended (if you still work with 1.11, it is not that easy but strongly recommended).

I developed and tested all day to release a FancyUpload version that works in Flash 9 and 10 (Kodus to Anders Rasmussen and his conversion to AS3). The code is now commited to github, so people can review and submit patches in a blink:

It includes the updated source, assets and showcases. As a fix for Flash 10, the invisible Flash object has been moved over the browse button (referred by the option target). A solution with less than 10 lines, thanks to MooTools. A showcase with the fixed source is also available, waiting for tests in your favourite browsers.

The project site and showcases are not updated for this release, this one is a preview for developers, to get some feedback. I’d appreciate any feedback, test results and patches developers using the new version can provide.

I like to feature people who have more time than me to write about MooTools and all its features and best practices. Sam and Troy from consider: open started to post 30 tutorials about their MooTools 1.2 experience, targeting also developers without MooTools/JavaScript experience. So far they finished 21 days full of good explanations and examples:

Kodus to Jan! I hope that he’ll find the time to continue this series. You can even write him, when you have an idea for an article. He even infected me again with this virus and I want to write more tutorials …

This article is a comprehensive list of 10 resources for developing or expanding crazy MooTools 1.2 ninja skills!

The first links are beginner guides for starting your successful career and understanding the basic concepts. After a few minutes, you’ll eventually see the light and realize how easy your daily life with MooTools can be. Then follow the next links.

If you already know JavaScript, MooTools makes it very easy for you, because it builds its API on JavaScript. Writing MooTools still feels like JavaScript because it follows the same principles. It just results in less headaches and a lot more fun!

If you are stuck, feel free to drop into our IRC-channel or post to the google group. Our ever helpful community is ready to answer your questions.

The mooWalkthrough is a step by step, page by page, walk through of the JavaScript Framework.

Take your time and click through the pages. This guide makes it really easy for beginners, because it covers all the basic patterns consicely. Every page shows a problem and its solution and references further resources.

Using JavaScript can be a bit daunting for the non-programmer types out there. So, I’m going to display a few examples of just how easy MooTools can be. Hopefully, this will get you motivated to do a bit of learning and see how powerful and usable MooTools can be.

A guide with “everyday” examples and non-technical descriptions. If you want a quick overview and skip the basic patterns, this one is for you.

Another new feature that’s been built into the latest version of MooTools is the Element Storage. This article describes the usage of this great new feature, as well as why it was developed, and how it can be used to keep your applications organized and efficient.

Day to Day Mootooling

When using Mootools from day to day, these links will light your path.

The authoritative source of information on Mootools, the source is considered one of the cleanest and easiest to understand in the JavaScript world. The source itself demonstrates some of the best practices that you should follow in your own code, including how to extend the MooTools classes for your own features.

The MooTools-Team keeps working hard on the page and the requested missing features. The compatibility-layer for the 1.11 version is one of the frequent requests in the group, so I’ll provide them here for now:

The compat scripts add the class and methodnames that have changed from 1.11 to 1.2. They also reflect several changed function arguments. MooTools 1.2 provides a powerful and consistent API, so I’ll continue my series on the changes that everybody can make the switch soon! I suggest to start reading them, to get an idea of the renamed classes and methods. Don’t trust these compat files implicitly, better convert your 1.11 scripts to 1.2 soon. We may update the compats for a more comprehensive 1.11 support, but 1.2 is the future-proof version!

While the Firefox Release Candidate 3 just came out today with minor updates, Mozilla announced the final release for June 17th. A world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours is also arranged.

My favourite JavaScript framework MooTools just got released as version 1.2, with tons of new features, performance boosts and bugfixes. To make the API consistent and bullet-proof for the future, the new release introduces several changed methodnames and arguments that break 1.11 and 1.2 beta code.

So I start a series about understanding the changes and converting to MooTools 1.2, starting with the powerful OOP helper Class.

I am Harald Kirschner, a university trained internet consultant and contractor currently located in Switzerland.
I offer advanced solutions for websites and applications focusing on usability and accessibility.
My expertise is in user interface design and development.